"I've seen the stern reformer scorn The things once deemed divine, And the bigot's zeal with gems adorn The altar's sacred shrine. I've seen the silken banners wave Where now the ivy clings, And the sculptured stone adorn the grave Of mitred priests and kings.
"I've seen the youth in his tameless glee, And the hoary locks of age, Together bend the pious knee, To read the sacred page; I've seen the maid with her sunny brow To the silent dust go down, The soil-bound slave forget his woe, The king resign his crown.
"Ages have fled--and I have seen The young--the fair--the gay-- Forgot as if they ne'er had been, Though worshipped in their day: And school-boys here their revels keep, And spring from grave to grave, Unconscious that beneath them sleep The noble and the brave.
"Here thousands find a resting place Who bent before this shrine; Their dust is here--their name and race, Oblivion; now are thine! The prince--the peer--the peasant sleeps Alike beneath the sod; Time o'er their dust short record keeps, Forgotten save by God!
"I've seen the face of nature change, And where the wild waves beat, The eye delightedly might range O'er many a goodly seat; But hill, and dale, and forest fair, Are whelmed beneath the tide. They slumber here--who could declare Who owned those manors wide!
"All thou hast felt--these sleepers knew; For human hearts are still In every age to nature true, And swayed by good or ill: By passion ruled and born to woe, Unceasing tears they shed; But thou must sleep, like them, to know The secrets of the dead!"
Thou beautiful Ash! thou art lowly laid, And my eyes shall hail no more From afar thy cool and refreshing shade, When the toilsome journey's o'er. The winged and the wandering tribes of air A home 'mid thy foliage found, But thy graceful boughs, all broken and bare, The wild winds are scattering round.
The storm-demon sent up his loudest shout When he levelled his bolt at thee, When thy massy trunk and thy branches stout Were riven by the blast, old tree! It has bowed to the dust thy stately form, Which for many an age defied The rush and the roar of the midnight storm, When it swept through thy branches wide.
I have gazed on thee with a fond delight In childhood's happier day, And watched the moonbeams of a summer night Through thy quivering branches play. I have gathered the ivy wreaths that bound Thy old fantastic roots, And wove the wild flowers that blossomed round With spring's first tender shoots.